


Glint of Metal

by Clockwork



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Claustrophobia, Daddy Issues, Gen, Hallucinations, Madness, Mental Illness, Season 2 spoilers, Spoilers, Trapped, Warning for spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 20:39:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15826521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clockwork/pseuds/Clockwork
Summary: SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2 AND PART OF SEASON 3Bobo is trapped in the well that he once left Doc in. He receives a visit from a dead man, and thinks he may have found his way out as well.





	Glint of Metal

Robert had devoted his life to Wyatt’s cause. Certainly he was a mouse of a man, nervous around the other gunslingers and given to the softest of stutters, but the risks were worth it. His eyes had been opened beyond the glories of God’s work and he knew that without chances all of mankind would answer to a demon of a man and his witchcraft wielding sister wives. 

For Wyatt, Robert had risked Hell by crossing the threshold of saloons, he had faced down the anger of Doc Holliday before the witness of others, and when the time had come that Robert could either offer himself in the name of a greater good or allow the demon that took the form of their sheriff to roam free… Well, Robert had given Wyatt the nod, and accepted the bullet that would take his own life along with allowing them to entomb the demon. Hopefully for eternity. 

Had he known that in doing so he would condemn his soul for all eternity, to be trapped in Hell when he was not a demon walking Earth, trapped in another kind of Purgatory all together? Well then, he would have allowed the demon itself to kill him, because at least then his soul would be free to ascend into Heaven and be shined upon with God’s glory. Instead he had literally taken a bullet, and found himself dragged down into Hell. 

Not before he betrayed a man though. That descent, he realized, would not happen because of giving himself up to being a better man but because he finally made the choice to be a selfish man instead. A man who left another to rot at the bottom of a pit, perhaps for as long as Robert himself would rot in Hell.

And now Robert, Bobo, finds himself at the bottom of that same well, his mind a jumbled mess of pain and timelines and confusion. He should be dead. Again. He should have been a screaming, crying mess of agony that bent his bones from the sheer will of the curse trying to force him back into the Ghost River Triangle. Instead he had lost sight of who he was, and doctors without an answer or identification had strapped him into a jacket where the sleeves locked in the back and the walls of his cell were padded for his own protection.

What he wouldn’t give for some of that cushy padding right about now in the bottom of that well. 

Sitting in mud created by water seeping up from the cold dirt beneath him, Bobo was starting to feel the cold seeping into his bones. It’s an odd sensation because it’s more than just what the cold can do to a man, but the way it felt in that moment. 

It was a memory of another time, a time when he had lay on a church floor dying, holding the body of his angel as she died in his arms. She had come to comfort him in his last moments, and now she was the one dying though he knew she never should. Not here. Not like this. 

“She never was your angel, you know. Not in the way you believed it, Robert.”

This was not his first visitor in the time since Bobo returned in the heir’s seconds of death, but it was the first time this particular visage came to him. He’d have rathered the hallucinations of Holliday over this. At least with Doc he knew it wasn't real. This though? This he had no idea if it was hallucinations, or the true apparition of a ghost.

“I’m aware of that, Wyatt. I knew the moment that youngest great great grandchild of YOURS grew up into that jailbait alcoholic that ran from Purgatory. My eyesight has never been that bad, and my memory still sharp. Wynonna sacrificed herself to protect Waverly. Something your kin never did,” he said, looking up at the man towering over him, not caring that he sat in mud before a man he had once revered as a king. 

 

“Waverly was not Ward’s child. She’s not an Earp. That said, she not yours either, Robert.”

Slowly Bobo rose to his feet, the long, dirt encrusted sleeves of his straight jacket flopping about as he moved. He jerked his hand, flicking one of those long sleeves at the image before him, ignoring how the buckled fabric went through the mirage of the man that he had once given his life for.

“Closer to mine than yours,” he said, straps snapping once more as he folded his arms over his chest, leaning nonchalantly back against the hard packed dirt of the well’s wall as if he was lounging about in Shorty’s once more. “And least I gave a shit about her. More than can be said for your kin. Ward Earp was a liar, and abusive, and proof that when you water down anything you get the worst rising to the top. Whatever you might have once been Wyatt, it’s Waverly that redeemed Wynonna, not the Earp bloodline.”

She may not be his child, and she might not even still be his angel, but Bobo would use Waverly against any of the Earp clan whenever he had a chance. She’s a sore spot, and he knew that. Even against Wynonna. She had left her there, abandoned Waverly to stand by the Earp name in Purgatory though everyone, Wynonna included, had treated the child like a piece of shit in a field. No wonder she so gladly embraced an imaginary friend, her special friend who saved her from dying… even as he convinced her to bury a charm that brought down the wards on the homestead.

Bobo might not be her father, but he damn sure treated her better than her family ever did until Wynonna’s return. 

“Your angel,” Wyatt jeered, lip curling as he said it. “Do you even listen to your lies anymore, Robert? Do you think about the man you were? About the man that gave his life to save so many? Do you realize many would have taken their own lives before threatening someone as wholesome as Waverly?”

“Wholesome as Waverly.” Bobo scoffed at those words, rolling his eyes with a dramatic toss of his head. “Your games with words, with guilt and shame, they worked on me once Wyatt but not anymore. Like Waverly, I am far from the victim that let you lead him to the slaughter. Your words don’t work on me anymore. You chose Holliday over me, a man that deserted you for his own selfish desires over the man that gave up everything for Purgatory. For you. And you still expect him to play your games.”

Bobo pushed away from the wall, stalking the tiny confines of the wall as if he was crossing the full breadth of Shorty’s saloon. Moving with the same grace and grit that he once had in boots and fur, even as he wore the attire of a mad man lost to his own mind. 

“That man died on the altar, Wyatt, holding your heir. Full circle, isn’t it? Died for an Earp. Died with an Earp,” he taunted, laughter ringing as it reverberated off the hard packed dirt walls. The sound was sharp, a ragged sound torn from the depths of madness. A madness that Bobo gave into freely, head back and his throat distended with the sound.

Not even lowering his gaze, his mind snapping back to the here and now and knowing that he was pressed to the curved wall. Knowing in that moment that whatever it was he’d been talking to was no longer there. It didn’t matter though. Not then. Nothing mattered to Bobo but one thing as the laughter faded, the echo of it slowly fading around him. 

He hadn’t noticed it before, the angle of his body before perhaps allowing it to be blocked. But now, stretched up and leaning back, Bobo can see it clear as day. Clear as the tiny slivers of daylight he could make out past the slats of the lid Doc himself had put in place atop the well. Slats that, until now, he hadn’t considered in their construction. A construction that had included, if the gleam of sunlight was any indication, nails. Metal. Nails.

Since his resurrection during Wynonna’s moments of death things had been different. Maybe it was the months he’d spent outside of the Ghost River Triangle. Maybe it was the release of the demon Bulshar and all of the changes upon Purgartory. Things were different, but Bobo is not one to quit. 

Slowly turning so that the mud left fresh streaks along his straitjacket, Bobo sank down once more to sit cross legged upon the cold, damp bottom of the well, staring up at the lid above him. Raising his hand, he narrowed his eyes, focusing on that tiny glimmer of sun on metal, willing it to move. He’s not sure if it did, but what does Bobo have but time? All the time of eternity to remove the nails, one by one, and then find his way out of the well. Then it wouldn’t be only Waverly he fed to Clootie but all of them. Every single one of them, and he’d save Doc Holliday for last. Just to watch his face as he finally died.


End file.
